Watching the Watchdogs: sitereviewauthority.org

It’s past time we wrote a review of review sites—those blogs and other web sites that claim, “we’ve signed up for a million programs and 99% of them are scams. We’ll show you the ones that aren’t!”

Why now? We actually did take a short look at some review sites a few months back, and we stand by what we said then. (Click here to read “Scam pitching web sites to avoid.”) But this issue has new urgency because our readers are being scammed after being sent to a rebate processing site recommended by sitereviewauthority.org, one of these review sites. (They’re also being referred to scams by ads on sites that should know better, such as Careerbuilder, but that’s a different post.) One reader writes:

I am ashamed I fell for this BS also. I am very suspicious of anything and normally would never ever do one of these dumb work at home things. What got me was that darn website saying they investigated all the scams and then listed off the ones that WERE NOT scams, yea sure. Process at home with Angel Stevens was the number one NOT A SCAM that was listed.

Like Wendy (March 28th) I read about “Angel Stevens” and her #1 “work from home” rebate processing business from SiteReviewAuthority.org. This website touted itself as being a “watchdog” group that actually bought these offers and had weeded through the scams for us (how very kind of them!)

There’s no better way for shady sites to call down the wrath of Steve and Joe than to pitch B.S. programs to people while claiming to do objective reviews.

The reader trusts the review site and then loses money to a program the reviewer recommended. It gives the whole idea of program reviews a bad name, and then people who don’t know any better lump us in with all the rest of the review sites that are just out to make a buck, or lots of them.

Why you can’t trust SiteReviewAuthority.org In an effort to distance ourselves from those other review sites, we’ll demonstrate using just one of them why you shouldn’t trust them. Siterviewauthority.org As you read above, this site recommends rebate processing, the biggest scam of the last two years. That in itself is proof that you shouldn’t trust what the site tells you. Well, that and this line from its paid surveys review: “Only 3 have received our world renewed seal of approval that means 98.3% of them are not recommended.” If you’re gonna pitch scams, at least try to hide your stupidity. And the fact that all the paid survey programs they recommend require a fee to “register.” But there’s more.

This site goes to great lengths to convince you of its impartiality and legitimacy. It was (allegedly) founded by a doctor (of what, he doesn’t say), it allegedly employs a staff of program testers who sign up for everything under the sun. The site has five “bulletproof” criteria to decide which opportunities to recommend.

The good doctor and his staff trash most of the programs to convince you that the ones they recommend are in some way different from all the others. They do a good job of it, too. Their “analyses” are pretty convincing. But beneath the veneer of legitimacy, it’s nothing but a collection of affiliate links (or hoplinks). The apparently objective reviews are just dressed up sales pages, and sitereviewauthority.org makes a commission from everyone who clicks on a link and signs up for a program. That’s what they’re about—making money, not telling you the hard truth about online scams.

Nothing against commission sales My objection is not that they get a commission when someone signs up using their link. That’s affiliate sales, and it fuels the Internet today. We here at I’ve Tried That are big fans of affiliate sales, and we’ve recommended things to our readers that we profit from.

But I have a big problem with “reviews” that recommend trash and convince people to spend money on misleading programs that can never deliver what they promise. We’ve never done that. Sitereviewauthority.org does it routinely.

Jeri, the second commenter above, gives a pretty good description of more of this site’s shenanigans:

Knowing how grateful we would all be for their hard work they even had a link at the bottom of the page where you could contribute to their company via paypal! They also had a 1-800# that you could call to report online scams. Having been “scammed” in the past I decided to call their 800# just to see what I got and lo and behold the first red flag was raised.

The “scam reporting” number required an “access code” to go further. I was going to go to their website to report their 800# problem but went first to Angel Stevens #1 “non scamming” site to see what it was all about (making money being a higher priority than reporting a bad 800#). I must admit she had me going. I did find it interesting that she used her “SiteReviewAuthority” #1 ranking to further validate her “legitimate business” and I will admit to thinking that that seemed fishy to me.

See how it works? Sitereviewauthority.org recommends a site as “scam free.” You go to the site and it displays its “SiteReviewAuthority” rank as some kind of stamp of legitimacy. That’s like me sending you to a “Pay Joe $100” site and displaying a fancy seal that says “This Site Ranked #1 by JOE!”

Join the Discussion

Thanks for the heads up on these folks. It’s so good to be able to pop on over here to check up on these scammers. I don’t know how they sleep at night. I know there are a lot of legitimate programs out there for motivated people. Thanks for keeping us informed. :)

well i dont have to say if i dont find work soon,no food lights in this house. i would give my phone #but i cant hear i read lips ,please if any one know of something,let me know . mnursemate@aol.com thanks marsha

I’ve noticed that when asked to recommend work at home programs, you do no do so in your forum. Do you privately, through email perhaps?

Joe

May 5, 2009 3:54 pm

Hi Dee, We actually have recommended several, though we might not always respond to specific comments. See the “Recommended” list at the bottom of each page. Also, click on the “affiliate marketing” or “blogging tips” categories on the right side of each page.

I finally clicked on one of those 1000 dollar a week work-at-home jobs and soon after i went to ask.com.Ironically enough site authority recommended the same site i had just previously viewed.And checking up on site authority affirmed my suspicions and that which sounds to good to be true usually is.

Both of the sites I’m looking at are easily detectable for being ripoffs.. but there is something you don’t know.. I’ve been trying to load ripoffreport.com for a little while now and I think that these sites might also have a script or something that stops these sites from loading.. it happens.. who knows.. either way for anyone who has seen these ripoff sights.. you should probably download some form of antivirus/spyware protection and scan.. I also plan to use “hijackthis” which is a program that scans for scripts that stop sites from loading

I am sick and tired of all the b.s. is going around with all the things I here, you know. I am just someone trying to make in this world by going into buisness for myselfe, Now I here this, please somebody give some Hope

Some of the “home survey” scams include a “How Much Money?” calculator which is a complete lie. How can 8 $5 surveys a day X 3 days a week and 8 $5 focus groups a day X 2 days a week earn over $460,000 a year? 8 X $5 is $40 bucks a day. At least two sites have the same “issues”…

I was scammed out of a lot of money(about $8,000) from this program.They make a lot of promises and you can never get a hold of them by phone or e-mail.Strategic Financial is affiliated with Jeff Paul and they tell you that you’ll have to set up an LLC in another state.They also say that you have to pay over $1800 for the setup fees for this corporation, plus reaccurring fees that they convienently charge to your credit card every month. I have tried calling them numerous times to cancel for a refund, but i could never get through. They also have my social security number and I’m worried.BEWARE!!!

I was being drawn into SiteReviewAuthority and “wanted” it to be real…but that very wanting reminded me to remember not to trust anything off the top on the Internet, so I did a search for ‘Site Review Authority’ on my fave search engine to see if there would be any fraud accusations against them and sure enough saved myself the grief right away. ‘Honesty’ is stuff of game now…pretty pathetic. I do a search on anything I’m about to believe in, before anything else. You wonder sometimes how many steps you have to climb, hearing some Websight saying “their wrong, now heres the real deal” each piling on top of the former, with each producing fraud accusatory results,to “their truth”. Probably the greatest sadness of the Internet is in the revealing of all the immoral behavior…how widespread it truelly is.

well I know I’m still looking for some kind of work at home. And I keep finding new things. And before I get excited about it, I start checking the gossip around it. I figure when I come across something that really and truly makes money, there won’t be a bunch of hens standing around bad mouthing it. Cause anyone involved with it will be to busy making money and more money. But until that day I’ll continue going through site after site

Just for additional proof that sitereviewauthority.org can’t be trusted…

I used Google to look up Jeff Paul’s Shortcut to Millions program and found sitereviewauthority.org. I went to their site and saw their 3 “recommended” sites. I went back to Google to see other results.

I found http://www.ripoff-review.com/ and you know what, their site looks VERY similar in layout to sitereviewauthority.org. Do a compare of the two. They both start out by saying they’ve thoroughly investigates 100s of programs, they both give you the same criteria they used to “grade” them, they both have a top three and both sites say their #1 recommended program has limited space so you need to act now and if they just can’t fit you in, to keep trying back.

It was the similarity in these two sites that threw a red flag up for me and in my continued Google search, I found this site. Thanks for having a forum like this where people can share their experiences and what they’ve found.

Henry, this site is full of evidence in the form of people who have tried rebate processing and other programs. When sitereviewauthority recommends known scams, as attested by this and dozens of other sites, you know they’re just in it for the sales commissions. Claiming that this site is feeding bullshit just like other sites is just plain stupid.

It’s also stupid to say people should look elsewhere for facts instead of online. Where would you suggest–the yellow pages? Angela Penbrook’s sales pages? There aren’t many facts available about scams. That’s how they work.

funny how you couldnt answer me. people go home and trust your instincts dont listen to anyone, because this site is feeding you bullshit just as much as the other sites. look for hard facts, not just whats written online and in blogs.

umm yea you might want to respond to the whole comment if your going to respond at all. i specifically asked for hard facts,in case you didnt understand what i meant by that : i meant that you provide truthfull statements which can be backed up by evidence. in other words what would really help is that you get people who have been in the program saying : i paid $197.00 and i worked for 53 hours (for example) and i didnt get any money for doing so. do you have any such evidence?

how do we know that your not trying to trash that site and that your not affiliated with another program? huh? answer me and provide hard facts if your “review” is legit as you say it is, how do i know your not like that site Sitereviewauthority.com?????

thanks for the review on the rebate processors scam. i goggled sitereviewauthority.org and found you before making any investments. thanks and have you reviewed any real businesses to work form home? please inform me if so. thanks, solomon

i unfortunantly found this info too late – i’ve already sent the $197 and i’m trying to get a refund now – i should have trusted my red flag scam alert – it went from: 1) they will send me emails where i log in and submit the rebates for users (which seemed extremely round about since i’m a programmer, kept thinking ‘y email it to me to enter to the database, y not have the form capture and send? – which i tried to convince myself, that it must be rebate sent in from craigslist or the like, so they would need someone to format the info sent in properly… yeah, i tried to rationize it) to: 2) ok, no, i’m posting affiliate links through paydotcom.com at a discounted price calling it a rebate… uh…what??? where’s the emails? and y are the majority of the resell products links to other sites to get u to pay more money on scams????(grumbles and starts sifting through the companies for any legit products) 3) oh joy, now i have finally found a couple of actual products and not scams (online cookbooks, how to build a koi pond, etc), i have to pay google to list the links for me and hope someone will first see it in the side bar and 2 hope they actually click it! yay for me! (waits 2-3 weeks watching like a hawk religiously) 4) uh, yeah, not one click which means no sales – which means no money back to me, let alone the fortold $500/day that the good doctor’s worker made – time to request a refund – oh shock, they keep trying to dodge that bullet and keep asking me to reconsider – last email i sent this morning was to send me my refund before i call the BBB hotline…

right after that, i decided to do what i should have done at the start, look up SiteReviewAuthority.org and see if they were a legit gov’t organization or a scam artist themselves… i really should have known better – heck, my ex had me in primerica and amway… but i overlooked the hype on Angel’s site because i thought that a official gov’t group had reviewed it, and i was really hoping just to get enough to hold me out till i could got called back to work (our team got laid off – waiting for new contracts to come in, but a couple of weeks has turned into over a month with no sign of new contract monies for at least another month) – ugh, just give me the dunce cap now, i would have been better off going to work parttime at the foodlion next door as a checkout girl…

I am interested in a work at home program. When I google the ones I’m interested in, I find that they are scams. I’m retired and would really like something to earn money and give me something to do at home in my spare time. What I would really like is the postcard mail out, but all of those I have investigated are scams. Can anyone give me some guidance into a real at home business?

first thing that made me think it might be a scam was that it had no forum, and therefore i couldn’t leave a comment, like so :) thats how i found this site, cause i did a google search on sitereviewauthority.org, to see what other people said about it.

I’ve Tried That was started in 2007 to help protect consumers from falling victim to online scams. We’ve written thousands of articles, helped millions of people, and have saved a countless amount of money from falling into the wrong hands.